“She’s not alone,” I tell her. “You were with her when she died. Her best friend. That means something.”
“She didn’t know what she was getting into,” Ava says, and her eyes beg for understanding.
“Of course she didn’t.”
Ava gasps for breath and sweat is breaking out along her pale forehead. I tighten my grip around her waist. “Why does it hurt so much when I breathe? Are you sure I’m not dying? You wouldn’t lie about that, would you?”
“Never. You are shot in the shoulder close to your lung. When you breathe, it pulls on the muscles, tendons, and nerves near your heart.”
The explanation seems to calm her. “I’m being a huge baby, aren’t I? You got stabbed and you didn’t say a thing.”
“It’s different,” I tell her.
She nods drowsily. “I got into modeling because of Rose. I wasn’t good enough to be on the cover of any magazine or walk the runway.”
“Then those people don’t know what they are doing, because you are more beautiful than anyone I’ve seen on a magazine cover.”
She gives me a weak smile. “Models are a different beautiful. They have to have angles and planes that look good under lights and makeup. They are unusual and striking. Like Rose. It’s a different sort of beautiful.” Her breath comes in short, agitated pants. “Rose got me the modeling jobs,” she repeats.
Over her head, Bennito gives me a worried look. Ava is beginning to sound a bit delirious. She’s lost in her past. Maybe it is the pain, maybe it is grief, but her legs are moving and we are almost there. I can see the private lounge ahead of us.
“Stay strong for Rose,” I tell her. “The mind can fuel you in miraculous ways.”
It’s why I’m still alive. I have refused to die no matter how many times the reaper has been at my feet, waving his scythe. He might be here now. Ava might be seeing him but I won’t let him take her.
Ava’s beautiful face is contorted with pain.
“You’re going to make it. Tell me more about Rose,” I order.
Ava bites her lips but nods. So strong. So brave. “Rose wanted to be a model and I had no one at home so when she moved to New York City, I went with her. She took me to the modeling agency but I wasn’t the right look. Too . . . big.” She looks down at her magnificent rack. Stupid modeling agency. “But Rose kept bringing me along until one day I went to the bathroom while Rose was at a job and as I was washing my hands, a woman next to me couldn’t stop looking at them. When I went to place them under the dryer she stopped me and pulled out a handkerchief and began to dry my hands off. It was the strangest thing. I thought she might have a fetish and want me to give her a hand job in the bathroom but she told me I had the most lovely hands and wondered if I had done modeling in the past.
“Of course I hadn’t. I signed with the agency and with Rose’s help, I ended up doing jobs all over the world using my hands.” She lifts them up and we all look at them. They are elegant. She is long fingered and her palms are slender. Where most people have wrinkly knuckles, hers are smooth and perfect but her once-unmarred hands have scratches on their backs. There are several scabs from open wounds, and her nail beds are torn. Her right hand is purple and green.
“What will I do now?” she asks, and this time her pain is from longing and despair instead of from her shoulder. “I’m all alone.”
“No,” I answer more harshly than I intend. “You aren’t alone, and you will never be alone again.”
Each step toward the lounge is more painful and as she begins to sob, I know I can’t make her walk another inch. I sweep her into my arms and stride into the lounge.
“Sir, is there a problem?”
“No, my friend is deathly afraid of flying. She had a little too much to drink in order to survive the flight. We just need to get up in the air and get going.”
“Very well.” He looks at us questioningly but does not stop us. Norse signs in and then moves off to alert the pilot.
We are not dressed like anyone else in the lounge. There are at least five groups—three of which are businessmen and two who appear to be travelers. The businessmen look at us suspiciously, and I wonder if any of these men are buyers for Duval.
I tuck Ava into a corner chair and Bennito runs off to get Ava some water. Rodrigo stands and appears to stare out the window, but I know he’s watching the occupants in the reflection.
Before any trouble starts, Norse appears. “We’re ready.”
I can tell by Ava’s pale face that the prospect of rising from her seat and walking across the tarmac is daunting. I scoop her up into my arms and walk out, uncaring what the other occupants might think. Our plane is leaving no matter what. We exit the lounge and walk into the humid afternoon air and then up the stairs into the plane.
“So rich you have your own plane,” she jokes as I settle her into a seat. Fuck the federal regulations regarding air traffic. I reach beside her and press the buttons that recline the seat to a flat bed, and then cover her up with as many blankets as we can find.
“Nah, just rent it.” I turn to Norse. “Any IVs?”
“Got it right here.” He strings two up and hangs them next to the seat. “One’s a morphine drip and the other’s an antibiotic.”
Within a couple of minutes we have the IVs pumping liquids into her and leads attached to her heart and a finger to monitor her vital signs.
“We spent all our cash to buy an island. Now we have to go out and make some more,” I tell her.
“Is that what this is all about?”
“In part. They have one of ours. Kind of like they held Rose for you.”
“Do you know if he’s still alive?”
“Yeah, the people we’re working for wouldn’t kill him. He’s too valuable an asset. They spent a lot of money to make him into what he is today.” Her eyes droop as the morphine takes hold. “Get some sleep. Your body needs it. We’ll talk when you’re feeling better.”
She barely nods. Beneath me, I can feel the rumble of the engines as the plane starts to move. “Norse, you monitor the feeds and, Bennito, I want you to start cracking the USB stack. We need to know what’s on there.”
I settle into my seat across from Ava and place my hand on her arm. I need the contact even if she doesn’t.
“What are we going to do with her after she’s better?” Norse asks.
“I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.” A girl who lives the high-flying life of a model, even that of a hand model, wouldn’t be interested in hiding herself away in my small island, no matter how idyllic it is. And we don’t have the money to rent the plane to fly into Miami every time she has the yen for some social life. But there’s a lot of time to think about the future. For now, I need to sleep. Forcing myself to rest, I don’t even realize we are in Miami until the plane touches down.
Ava is still asleep when I sit up, shaking the cobwebs out of my head.
“I need you to come and look at this,” Bennito says as soon as he notices I’m awake. The tone in his voice has me worried, and I’m not sure whether it’s the harsh glare of the interior of the airplane or whether he has really lost all color in his face, but he looks like shit.
“Bad news, is it?”
“Pretty much the worst.”
He slides the screen around so I can look at it. Norse and Rodrigo crowd behind me.
The emails and phone conversations that have been recorded and transcribed are no ordinary ones. The information on Bennito’s screen is a collection of names and heads of state. Not just from the U.S. but from everywhere. The information reveals for the last ten years the payments governments have made to various insurgent groups to kill off political rivals, spies, and what I presume to be inconvenient lovers by the female names on the list. It’s a hit list. A dirty, worldwide hit list.
“I kind of wish you weren’t as good at encryption as you are,” I tell Bennito.
“Shit, I know. But this was child’s play. A fifth-grade coder could have
cracked this.” Bennito jabs the screen with his finger.
“Duval must’ve thought that he was invincible. But why?” Norse muses.
“Stupid is as stupid does. He’s French and they always have a flair for the dramatic.”
Bennito lifts the receiver. “Do we want to keep a copy of it?”
“No. If it’s known that we have a copy, we will become targets. The only way we stay safe is by making sure that people fear us. But we can’t have them always knocking down our door trying to kill us because we know too much.” I take the receiver and place it in a small nylon bag that holds the USB sticks.
Everyone looks relieved that I’m taking responsibility. It’s a ticking time bomb, and I think if I had opened an escape hatch and dropped the information out of the plane, they would’ve been just as happy. I hate spy games. It’s one thing to kill a man. Lots of men need killing. I certainly don’t mind protecting them in trying to keep people alive, either. But with secrets like these? There’s always someone who’s willing to kill to obtain them and to make sure they never see the light of day. Information like that can only harm you. But it can also keep you safe, a voice whispers at the back of my head.
When the pilot comes back to tell us that the refueling is done, we all breathe a sigh of relief.
“Break out the cards, boys, we’re almost home,” I say and then turn back to the still-resting Ava. Even though she is asleep, I begin to tell her about everything that she can expect. The palm trees, the fresh fruit we’ve planted, the windmill that we’ve set up to harness clean energy. I tell her that the island is thick with lonely men and that if she had lots of model girlfriends, we could set up a love connection. Norse snorts at this but doesn’t voice any objections.
A small smile touches her lips as if she can sense, even in her unconscious state, that the mood is lightening.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
AVA
I’m having all kinds of messed-up dreams. I know they’re dreams, but it doesn’t matter because my brain is determined to stay in them. Rose holds my hand and we sit on the beach, our toes in the sand.
“I met a guy,” she tells me.
“Me too,” I say, and her fingers are warm against mine. “He’s amazing. The most wonderful guy I’ve ever met.”
“How?” she asks. “What does he do that’s so great?”
“He’s protective and kind and funny. He’s sexy and he’s got a big dick.”
“Big dicks are important.”
“But so is being kind. And he’s treated me so good. Better than I’ve ever been treated.” I think about Rafe and the way he touches me, like I’m gold. Then I add, “He gives me good orgasms. That’s important, too.”
“It is important,” Rose says solemnly. “You should marry him.”
I laugh, high and wild, because in my dream, apparently I have a crazy laugh. “He doesn’t want to marry me. He doesn’t even think we should have sex.” This makes me sad, and I begin to cry. I love Rafe, and he doesn’t want me.
“Everyone should have sex,” Rose says, her voice dreamlike. “It’s how we connect.”
“Sometimes I think he doesn’t want to connect to me.” I stare unhappily out at the ocean. In the distance, a gigantic dinosaur—no, Godzilla—stomps past, moving through the waves. “There he goes.”
“Is that your boyfriend?”
“Yeah.”
“He seems nice,” Rose says, and she squeezes my hand again. “The guy I met isn’t so nice.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask, because it worries me to hear her say that. Her eyes are filling with tears and she looks so sad.
“Oh, Ava,” she says, and gives my hand a little shake. “Ava. Ava. Ava. Wake up. I’ve always done what I wanted.”
And then she’s leaving, walking out into the water, and Godzilla’s getting more and more distant. Everyone’s leaving me, and I cry harder. My hand keeps shaking.
“Ava. Ava, baby.” My hand shakes again, and I look down to see a crab’s gotten ahold of it. I shake it again. “Wake up,” the crab tells me, and it’s got Rafe’s voice.
My eyes flutter open, and I blink slowly. The room is dark, and the bed underneath me is soft. There’s a window and mini-blinds off to one side, and sunlight filters through. Someone’s holding my hand off to the side of the bed. I turn and look, and see Rafe’s gorgeous face. I lick my lips. “Hey.”
“You were having a nightmare, baby,” he says, and squeezes my hand. “I’m sorry I woke you up, but you were crying.”
“You were leaving me,” I murmur, still groggy. “Everyone’s leaving me.”
“It’s the morphine. You’re just having crazy dreams.”
“Don’t leave me, too,” I tell him.
“I won’t, baby. You’re mine.”
“I like that,” I tell him sleepily. “I’m going back to bed now.”
He chuckles softly. “Okay, Ava. I’ll be right here.” He gives my hand another squeeze, and I slide back into unconsciousness.
• • •
When I wake up again some time later, I have to pee, my shoulder is killing me, and my mouth feels like the desert. My hand is gently held in Rafe’s, and his head’s resting against my leg, dozing in his chair as he holds on to me. His dark curls are everywhere, jaw unshaven, and it looks like he hasn’t left my bedside. It’s a good look for him, and I just stare with a sigh of pleasure. I could look at him forever.
But then my bladder insists otherwise. I squeeze his hand to wake him up, and he jumps to alertness, jerking upright. “Hi,” I say softly.
His eyes warm as he looks at me. “Hey, baby.”
I get goose bumps just with how he says the casual nickname. “I need to use the bathroom.”
He helps me get out of bed and I shrug him off to go take care of things, and when I leave the bathroom, he insists I get back into bed. I do, though I’m mostly feeling fine, just tired and achy. Well, that and my shoulder is crap. It doesn’t feel right to relax, though. Something’s wrong. “Where are we?”
“My island. Tears of God.” He moves to my side and tucks the blanket gently around me. “How do you feel?”
“Poopy,” I tell him. As if he can sense my thirst, he gets a pitcher from the bedside, pours me a glass of water, and then holds it to my mouth. I reach for it, only to notice that my bad wrist is now wrapped in a bandage, and my pinky has been given an official splint. He helps me drink and I lie back on the pillows again, feeling weak. Memories flick through my mind, of Duval and Rose. “I guess I fucked things up, huh?” I’m trying to be all casual about it, but to my horror, tears flood my eyes.
“Oh, baby, no,” he murmurs. His hand touches my good one and he strokes it, caressing me, rubbing my arm. Just touching me everywhere he can. “You did great. Things just went wrong. It happens.”
Things went wrong, and now Rose is dead. I went through hell to try to save her. I risked my life for hers, and all the while, she had no clue I was in danger. She was only truly at risk when I showed up. I remember her scream and her falling over me as Duval shot her.
“I couldn’t save her,” I whisper. My face crumples and I begin to sob.
“I know, baby. I know.” He sits on the bed and pulls me against him gently.
Of course he knows. His best friend died, too. I cling to him, weeping. I’m an ugly crier, and I blubber against his chest for what feels like forever, wetting it with miserable tears and snot and unhappiness.
I killed my best friend. I let her die.
“You couldn’t protect her, baby. She chose her path.” His hands smooth up and down my back, soothing me. “You did your best. We all do our best. Sometimes it’s just not enough.”
There’s pain in his voice, too, and I know he’s feeling what I do. He’s thinking about Garcia even as I cry over Rose. Eventually, my sobs turn into hiccups, and Rafe holds me against his chest, rocking me, soothing me.
I feel so safe with him. I never want to leave the circle of his arms, eve
r.
• • •
I fall asleep again in Rafe’s arms and wake up later that night. They’ve stopped giving me morphine and switched it to some heavy-duty Tylenol, which means I’m hurting and cranky, but at least I’m not having weird dreams. Rafe insists on me staying in bed and spoon-feeds me soup like I’m an invalid. I’m torn between thinking it’s sweet and wanting to knock the spoon out of his hand.
But then after dinner, he climbs into bed with me and we cuddle, and I forgive everything. His hand trails through my hair and his fingers move down my arm, and we don’t talk. We just touch and enjoy each other. He’s got me cradled at the perfect spot, tucked under his chin, and if it makes my wounded shoulder hurt a little, I don’t care.
Eventually, though, life intrudes. It always does. “I have to go to Virginia,” Rafe tells me in a low voice. “To deliver the information and get my man back.”
I knew this was coming, but I still cling to Rafe, unhappy at the thought of him leaving me. “When?”
He hesitates. “Soon. I wanted to make sure you were okay first.”
Which means he’s probably overdue and everyone’s antsy. My stomach knots with worry. “What happens now?”
Rafe’s silent. He’s silent for so long that tears prick my eyes again. I’m just a weepy, blubbery mess lately. I know he’s trying to think of the best way to get rid of me, though. I think of his words before I went into the bungalow. Let’s just get through today.
Well, that day’s over and we’re out the other side. Not a lot of use for a hand model with ugly hands. I bury my face against his neck and start crying again.
“I know,” he says, and his hands stroke down my arm again. “Bennito . . . he’ll take you home. You just let him know when you’re ready and he’ll charter the plane for you, okay?”
“Sure,” I say in a wobbly voice.
“There’s no place for you here, Ava.” He sounds desperate for me to understand. “The island’s not like life in the city. You’d be bored in a month.”
“No, it’s fine,” I tell him, trying to blink away my tears. I know what he’s saying. There’s no place for you at my side. I’ve been broken up with lots of times, but it’s never hurt like Rafe’s pushing me away does. I thought he was different. I thought we had a real connection.
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